Author: shlomi ben-oz

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion will henceforth be known as the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering – in light of evolving world trends and recent developments in the field 

The Technion Faculty of Electrical Engineering will change its name to The Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The addition of the term “Computer” to the title reflects a long process of expansion of the traditional electrical engineering discipline into numerous, diverse spheres related to computer engineering. The Technion Senate recently approved the change of name of the long-standing faculty, which is the largest in the Technion alongside the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion was established 86 years ago, in 1935. In 1949, when the State of Israel celebrated its first birthday, the Electrotechnical Department was established under the leadership of Professor Franz Ollendorff, a world-renowned scientist and later recipient of the Israel Prize. In 1956, the faculty was relocated from the historical Technion building in the Hadar neighborhood to today’s campus, and in 1965 it was renamed the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

Since the faculty’s inception, its alumni have been driving the development of Israeli high-tech. In the words of its Dean Professor Nahum Shimkin, “The title ‘electrical engineering’ has accompanied us for more than five decades. We look back on our past achievements with pride and look ahead to the future and the technological advances yet to come. The present change is designed to reflect the broad fields of research and teaching at the faculty. As a modern, leading academic electrical and computer engineering department, our areas of specialization and research encompass most high-tech related disciplines, including microelectronics and nanoelectronics, electromagnetics and photonics, quantum technology, energy and power systems, electronic circuits and computer chip design, signal and image processing, machine learning and intelligent systems, robotics and control, communication engineering and information theory, computer communication networks, computer systems engineering, and more. Renaming the faculty and expanding its areas of activity are in line with the global trend, and particularly with the U.S., where most of the leading electrical engineering departments have already changed their names similarly.”

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan praised the decision and said, “This is a day of celebration. The change of name reflects the faculty’s most important feature – the ability to innovate and keep abreast of the latest trends and developments. By recruiting outstanding staff members, the faculty has succeeded in continuously broadening its fields of research and teaching, in maintaining its leading position in research in the global arena, and in making a great contribution to the Israeli economy. I know the faculty will not rest on its laurels but will continue to expand its areas of research and teaching into new and future worlds of technology.”

In a video greeting broadcast at the ceremony, Dr. Andrew Viterbi, after whom the faculty is named, said, “I am always happy to congratulate the Technion community – students, professors, and staff, and especially those in the faculty whose name is changing today.” Dr. Viterbi, one of the founders of Qualcomm, inventor of the Viterbi algorithm and past recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honor, made many major contributions to the faculty, the largest of which was $50 million in 2015.

“Electrical engineering and computer science could not exist without each other,” he said. “It’s clear that without the breakthroughs of the electronic engineers and physicists of the 1940s and 50s, there would be no computers in the 19th century, and on the other hand, Professor Charles Begge of Cambridge tried – and failed – to build a computer without electricity, so, today let us rejoice with a Shehecheyanu [prayer] at the recognition of the union between Electrical and Computer Engineering.”

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Jacob Ziv, recipient of the Israel Prize and the EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture, who recently won the IEEE Medal of Honor – the highest recognition of the International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – said, “The faculty’s quality is grounded in three foundational pillars that provide reciprocal feedback: a rich study and research program that not only helps graduates to find jobs in industry, but also cultivates their ability to survive in a world of technological innovation; recruitment of the finest students, some of whom will want to progress to graduate studies and pursue research; and recruitment of excellent staff who will conduct future innovative, cutting-edge technology research.”

Faculty Dean Prof. Shimkin added, “This faculty, under its former name, which is proudly borne by more than fifteen thousand alumni, has a privileged standing in the development of the Israeli high-tech industry, and is world-renowned as a center of excellence in research and teaching. Under our new name, we will continue to aspire to carry out world-class cutting-edge research, providing our graduates with the finest engineering education available in all spheres of electrical engineering, electronics and computer engineering.”

Chairman of the Faculty Students Committee Elad Paritzki said, “We students at the faculty love the change of name because it represents the expansion of the faculty’s activities. This is a faculty that is characterized by a young, entrepreneurial spirit and a broad range of disciplines, and when I look back, I know that I made the right choice. On behalf of the students and alumni, I thank the faculty, which is a second home to us all.” 

Associate Professor Omri Barak of the Technion has won a prestigious grant for an international research project on memory in biology, computing, and materials

Associate Professor Omri Barak, a member of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and a partner in the Network Biology Research Laboratories at the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences & Engineering at Technion, has won an HSFP research grant. The grant will support a collaborative research project between Prof. Barak, who will be responsible for the theoretical aspect, and two experimenters: Prof. Nathan Keim of the Department of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania and Prof. Mathew Diamond of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy.

The goal of the project, which is entitled “Memory – from Material to Mind”, is to find common and connecting properties between different memory systems: biological memory, computational memory, and physical memory (shape-memory materials). According to Prof. Barak, “In our joint research, we will be looking for principles that repeat themselves in these different disciplines, and will examine whether insights from one discipline, physical memory, for example, can be applied to another discipline, such as computational memory.”

The three-way collaboration will be based on the input in physics (materials with memory) provided by the American partner, Prof. Keim, and in biology (memory experiments with rats), provided by the Italian partner, Prof. Diamond, with Prof. Barak’s expertise in neural networks serving as a bridge between the two. “In a certain sense,” he explains, “I will be trying to create a common language between the disciplines. The prevalent approach to theoretical research into neural networks is based on complex connections between simple parts. On the other hand, it’s a known fact that neurons themselves are far from simple. Translating the properties of materials with memory into this network language will provide an understanding of the effect of building blocks of greater complexity on the memory capabilities of neural networks. By carefully examining what is common to the different kinds of memory and how they are different, we will attempt to further our knowledge of all three.”

HFSP – The Human Frontier Science Program – funds international frontier research in the life sciences under the umbrella theme “Complex mechanisms of living organisms”. The program mainly funds risky projects of the kind that are unlikely to be supported by the industry, which are executed by researchers who have not collaborated previously.

This year, grants totaling 33 million dollars were approved to support a small minority (4%) of the 709 groups that applied for a research grant. Each of the recipients will receive around 120,000 dollars per year over the three coming years. According to the announcement by the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization, “The 2021 HFSP investigators display remarkable depth in approach and innovative thinking.”

There is much talk about green energy throughout the world. The Paris Agreement incentivizes switching to renewable energy sources, and indeed, green energy appears very attractive, with its promises of no pollution and no need to extract fossil fuels. The sun and the wind are there, and all we need to do is harness them to produce electricity. On the face of it, those same factors should also make green energy cheaper to produce.

What then stands in the way of shifting our energy production to these sustainable sources? And why hasn’t the world already shifted to renewable energy?

One of the challenges of switching energy production to sun and wind is their irregularity: wind rises or dies down. The sun rises and sets, or it is obscured by clouds. At times, energy production using these sources is effective, but at other times, production falls while consumption does not. A power plant that only provides electricity during the daylight hours, for example, cannot answer a population’s needs. It follows that energy must be produced when it can be, and stored, to be released when it is needed. In essence, a solar power plant would need to charge big batteries during the day, to be used during the night. Batteries of such scale, however, are very expensive, both in initial costs and in maintenance.

Understanding why batteries are so expensive requires a closer look at how they function. For commercial use, flow batteries are used. They differ from dry batteries (commonly used in home devices) and lemon batteries (familiar from school experiments) in that the two electrolytes (liquids with dissolved positively and negatively charged particles) are not static, but pumped through the system. A selective membrane separating the two liquids prevents self-discharging. The interacting chemicals on two counter electrodes produce the electric current. 

The membrane, unfortunately, is the most expensive element of the battery stack. Its price accounts for up to 40% of the initial costs of the battery stack. Furthermore, the membrane requires maintenance and must be replaced continually due to wear. The electrolytes, in contrast, can last 20 years or more. Reducing the price of the membrane, or else finding a way to eliminate it, would provide a significant boost to the cost-effectivity of sustainable energy.

This is exactly what Technion M.Sc. student Lihi Amit set out to achieve, under the supervision of Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Professor Matthew Suss from The Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program, and working together with Danny Naar, Dr. Robert Gloukhovski, in collaboration with Dr. Gerardo Jose la O’ from Primus Power Inc. Their recent article in ChemSusChem was featured on the journal’s cover.

The researchers’ approach was to entirely eliminate the membrane. If the two electrolytes could flow together without intermixing, in a similar way to how oil and water can share a container without mixing, and only interact with each other in a controlled manner to produce an electric current, the need for the membrane would be eliminated. The team constructed a flow battery using bromine and zinc – cheap and readily available materials — and used a non-propriety complexing agent. The complexing agent trapped the bromine in bubble-like droplets, producing an oil-and-water effect, and releasing only as much bromine as was necessary at any given moment for maintaining the electric current. In effect, the expensive membrane of the battery was replaced with the cheap and fluid membrane of each individual droplet.

The study proved the feasibility of this novel approach to flow batteries and characterized its performance – a necessary step on the way to commercial use. One can hope that in the future cheap membrane-less flow batteries will permit the widespread use of sustainable but inconstant energy sources.

Click here for the paper in ChemSusChem

 

Orr Zohar, who is currently completing his master’s degree in the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion, has been selected to continue his studies at Stanford University after being accepted to the prestigious Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. Zohar, 26, is the first Technion student to win the scholarship and is the first Israeli to be accepted to the program in the engineering discipline. He will use the scholarship to fund his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he hopes to develop biomedical imaging tools for neuroscience/neurosurgical navigation.

“My interest in neurosurgical navigation is not coincidental”, he says. “Throughout my childhood, my father has undergone several successful neurosurgical procedures. Unfortunately, about two years ago, our luck ran out and he suffered significant motor-speech impairments. The contrast between the outcomes of his past surgeries and this one highlighted for me the importance of building better tools for surgical navigation.” At the end of this summer, Zohar will be leaving to begin his doctorate at Stanford, where he will focus on the connection between computational photography – a technique that enhances or extends digital photography capabilities through the use of digital computation – and biomedical imaging. 

Zohar began his studies at the Technion’s Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, where, already in the first semester, he became actively involved in research in the university’s laboratories and was thus exposed to a wide variety of research fields. Moreover, he authored and published scientific articles while still studying for his bachelor’s degree – quite a rare achievement – and continued to do so during his graduate studies.

As an undergraduate, Zohar spent a summer at Stanford, working in the laboratory of Technion alumnus Professor Adam de la Zerda, where, for the first time, he was exposed to the connection between image processing, optics, and medical research. “The time I spent at Stanford,” he says, “profoundly impacted my interests – for the first time, I was exposed to research in the fields of biomedical imaging and image processing, which greatly influenced my academic direction.” Thus, while still completing his bachelor’s degree, Zohar began studying towards his master’s, majoring in signal processing, image processing, and machine learning. In parallel, he worked as a researcher in the Laboratory of Nanomaterial-based Devices, led by Professor Hossam Haick of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, where he developed flexible electronics and nanomaterial-based sensors for medical applications. 

The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program aims to develop a community of emerging leaders capable of working across disciplines and cultures while preparing them to address the world’s challenges through innovation and collaboration. The scholarship is considered one of the world’s most prestigious graduate-level scholarships, where outstanding students and promising leaders can pursue the graduate degree of their choice at Stanford. Funding includes tuition and associated fees, a living stipend, and is awarded to up to one hundred candidates from all over the world every year.

 

Three Technion projects will be tested onboard the International Space Station, as part of the Ramon Foundation and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology’s “Rakia Mission.” The projects selected for the mission were announced today at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. 

Speaking in the name of all winning projects, Prof. Moran Bercovici of the Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering said this is “an adrenaline shot – there are no other words to describe what this mission does to the Israeli space community. This is an extraordinary opportunity on every scale. The schedule is crazy, the challenges are immense, but we will make it; this is in our Israeli DNA, this is what we’re good at. I want to thank all partners: the Ramon Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Israeli Space Agency and Rakia Mission’s scientific-technological committee. And a special thank you to Eytan Stibbe for his choice not to content himself with a personal experience, but to devote to science this amazing journey, on which he is taking us all.”

Eytan Stibbe, one of the founders of the Ramon Foundation, is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in early 2022, as part of the Axiom Space Ax-1 Mission, pending NASA and Axiom approvals – the first private astronaut mission to the space station. This will make him the second Israeli in space, after Ilan Ramon, who perished in the Columbia Space Shuttle accident.

During his time at the International Space Station, Stibbe is expected to carry out several experiments, offering an opportunity for Israeli researchers and entrepreneurs to examine the feasibility and viability of initiatives, and to advance space research and products. The experiments were recently selected by a science and technology committee appointed by the Ramon Foundation. This space mission assists in overcoming one of the main barriers to entering the aerospace industry – the high cost of astronaut hours for carrying out the research. 

Three revolutionary Technion projects were selected to be tested by Stibbe onboard the International Space Station:

The laboratory of Prof. Moran Bercovici at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering plans to demonstrate the first-ever fabrication of optical components in space. The Fluidic Telescope Experiment (FLUTE) was designed and built by Dr. Valeri Frumkin, Mor Elgarisi, and Omer Luria, under the guidance of Prof. Bercovici, in collaboration with a team of researchers at NASA, led by Dr. Edward Balaban. The experiment onboard ISS will investigate the ability to leverage the microgravity environment to produce high-quality lenses by shaping liquids into a desired form, followed by their solidification. A successful demonstration onboard the ISS will pave the way for fabrication of advanced optical components in space, including the creation of extremely large space telescopes, overcoming today’s launch constraints. 

The teams of Prof. Ehud Behar and Prof. Shlomit Tarem from the Physics Department, spearheaded by Ph.D. student Roi Rahin, are developing a gamma-ray burst localizing instrument – a device they named GALI. Gamma ray bursts are produced by exploding stars going to supernova, as well as by the collision of neutron stars. The same events also produce gravitational waves, bringing the study of the two phenomena into close association. The main challenge facing scientists is being able to localize in the sky where the gamma ray burst is coming from, which would then allow astronomers around the world to point their telescopes towards the event. GALI improves on earlier detectors by utilizing sensors significantly smaller than were previously used, arranged in an innovative 3D array. It is thanks to this unique arrangement that, while being much smaller than previous gamma-ray burst detectors, GALI promises to be more precise in its directionality capabilities.

The third project is a tiny engine for CubeSats – miniature satellites made of cubic modules 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm in size – which started its development in the Aerospace Plasma Lab at the Asher Space Research Institute. Headed by Dr. Igal Kronhaus of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, the engine is now being commercialized by Space Plasmatics. The lab’s engine, called “Inline-Screw-Feeding Vacuum-Arc-Thruster,” and its fuel supply together, are no bigger than a human finger, but can provide enough impulse to maintain a flight of satellites in a formation for months or more. The fuel, a small titanium wire, is safe to hold in one’s hand. The engine will be placed on the exterior of the International Space Station and be operated under conditions of hard vacuum and extreme temperatures.

Two more of the selected projects have their roots in the Technion: one is by Aleph Farms – a cultured meat startup. Aleph Farms’ technology was developed based on the research of Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. The other is by OncoHost – a personalized cancer treatment startup, based on research conducted by Prof. Yuval Shaked of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion.

All projects must now undergo a rigorous design review process in order to be ready to launch.

Nir Cohen of Moshav Neta’im, an 11th-grade student at the Gymnasia HaRealit High School in Rishon LeZion, won a silver medal at the 55th Mendeleev Chemistry Olympiad, which took place online this year with the participation of 25 countries. The Mendeleev Olympiad has been held for 55 years, and Israel has participated in the event since 2016. The team was trained at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, under the guidance of Professor Zeev Gross and the team’s head coach, Dr. Izana Nigel-Etinger.

At the end of the process, which included three selection phases and intensive practice sessions, eight students had the privilege of being chosen to participate in the Olympiad: Nir Cohen, an 11th-grade student at the Gymnasia HaRealit High School in Rishon LeZion; Noya Dishon, an 11th-grade student at the Ort Psagot High School in Karmiel; Itamar Steinitz, a 12th-grade student at the Kfar Hayarok School in Ramat Hasharon; Salakh Bshara, a 12th-grade student at the Ibrahim Kassam Amal Multidisciplinary School in Tira; Sean Cherneyev, a 12th-grade student at the Darca Danciger School in Kiryat Shmona; Neta Eiger, a 10th-grade student at the Shaked Darca Secondary School in Sde Eliyahu; Simion Kotliar, a 10th-grade student at the Third Comprehensive School in Ashdod; and Sheli Skop, a 12th-grade student at the Kfar Hayarok School in Ramat Hasharon.

Prof. Gross, who is head of Youth Programs at the Faculty of Chemistry, said, “The importance of participating in the Mendeleev Olympiad goes above and beyond the experience and the privilege because it prepares and seasons the students for the IChO, the International Chemistry Olympiad, in which 84 countries take part.”

This year, the IChO will be held online from July 25 to August 2.

The four International Olympiads in Sciences for Youth are the product of a joint venture between the Future Scientists Center, established by the Maimonides Fund, and the Israeli Ministry of Education, which are also deeply involved in processes of examination, lessons learned, and policy crafting.

PTC has entered into a long-term strategic collaboration agreement with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, under which PTC will establish a research and development center and invest NIS 15 million ($5 million USD) into the Technion’s main campus in Haifa. Under the terms of the agreement, PTC and the Technion will jointly research and upgrade learning processes relating to advanced manufacturing technology. PTC’s Haifa development center will relocate to the Technion under the leadership of Dr. Michael Reitman. 

PTC has also allocated an annual budget for joint research in industrial IoT, augmented reality, simulation, and generative design. The allocation supports Technion faculty by providing software products; awarding scholarships and incentives to students and researchers; initiating hackathons and contests, and sponsoring educational programs.

“Today, scientific and technological breakthroughs need both multidisciplinary research and close collaboration between academia and industry. Industry is at the forefront of active implementation and is well acquainted with market needs, whereas academia brings basic scientific knowledge and research depth,” said Prof. Uri Sivan, President, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. “This is why, in the past few years, Technion has placed greater emphasis on working to tighten its connections with the industry, and the present agreement is the culmination of a long-standing relationship between Technion and PTC. We believe the agreement enables both parties to gain ground, grow, and reap the benefits of each other’s strengths.”

Announced in 2014, the initial agreement between PTC and Technion jumpstarted a robotics and digital content program for the Science and Technology department, including a teaching laboratory for industrial IoT, computer-aided design, manufacturing, and augmented reality, among other STEM topics. As a result of the long-standing collaboration, Technion alumni have joined PTC to lead the company’s Haifa development center, PTC’s second-largest center outside the U.S.

“The importance of collaboration between academia and industry is recognized worldwide,” said Ziv Belfer, Divisional Vice President of Global Research and Development and General Manager, PTC. “PTC has enjoyed 15 years of successful collaboration with Aachen University in Germany, including the construction of a separate campus that also houses R&D laboratories for companies that collaborate with academic staff. Several projects subsequently became success markers for commercial companies, and we look forward to replicating these efforts with the Technion in Israel.”

PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) enables global manufacturers to realize double-digit impact with software solutions that enable them to accelerate product and service innovation, improve operational efficiency, and increase workforce productivity. In combination with an extensive partner network, PTC provides customers flexibility in how its technology can be deployed to drive digital transformation – on premises, in the cloud, or via its pure SaaS platform. 

Substantial tissue loss can be the result from different causes, including cancer, injury, and infection. Reconstructive surgery attempts to mitigate the damage. Currently, the clinical “gold standard” in the field of reconstructive surgery is the autograft, which entails harvesting tissue from one part of the patient’s body, and transferring it to the damaged site. For example, to reconstruct the lower jaw, surgeons may harvest a portion of the fibula bone, together with the soft tissue and blood vessels around it, from the patient’s leg. The soft tissue and blood vessels are necessary for the bone to survive in its new location.

As one might imagine, there are significant disadvantages to taking a large chunk out of one’s body, such as considerable pain or all the usual complications associated with a surgery at the donor site. Scientists are therefore looking for alternatives to tissue harvest and moving towards tissue engineering. Although some progress has been made in the field, there are still major challenges to overcome in the search for tissue replacements. The Holy Grail for the scientists is de novo tissue generation. Instead of taking tissues from one part of the body to implant in another, new tissues for implantation would be grown in a lab.

That is where Professor Shulamit Levenberg and her team come in. In the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion, the focus of her tissue regeneration lab has been on the formation of complex blood vessel networks in lab-grown tissues. Recently, her team created vascularized soft tissues for implantation using stem cells derived from the dental pulp, that is the soft tissue inside the tooth, together with capillary forming (endothelial) cells. The addition of the dental pulp stem cells promoted the generation of the blood vessels, eventually leading to enhanced tissue remodeling and repair. The new methodology was then used to repair a bone defect in rats, leading to a complete recovery.

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As previously mentioned, bone implanted as part of reconstructive surgery would need soft tissues to support it and blood vessels to feed it. In a recent study conducted in Prof. Levenberg’s lab, Dr. Idan Redenski and his colleagues were able to tackle the issue. In findings recently published in Advanced Functional Materials (link), the team put together their own vascularized tissue technology with biological bone implants developed at Columbia University by Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic to create a de novo tissue flap containing live bone supported by vascularized soft tissue. This took the concept of implantable bone tissue to a whole different level.

That, however, was only the first stage. Having shown that a mixed tissue flap can be grown, the team proceeded to use the new methodology to repair a bone defect in rats, using a two-step approach. First, an engineered soft tissue flap was implanted. Once it was integrated into the body of the rat, the engineered flap was exposed in a second surgery and used to repair a bone defect, while being supported by major blood vessels next to the defect site. The decellularized bone was exposed and inserted to correct the existing defect while the engineered tissue flap supported it. The results were a complete success: the soft tissue with the blood vessels supporting and feeding the bone led to bridging of the bony defect, with the rat’s cells growing in and replenishing the implant. It was, in fact, a complete recovery, better than anything reconstructive surgery can achieve, and not based patient tissue harvest.

Returning to the concept of a jaw implant, one can hope that one day, based on the methods developed by Prof. Levenberg, Dr. Redenski, and the rest of the team, it will be possible for the patient to receive a lab-grown bone perfectly matching the shape of their face, surrounded by lab-grown soft tissues based on their own cells cultivated on 3-dimensional biomaterials. No major damage to other parts of the patient’s body would be necessary.

After finishing his Ph.D., Dr. Redenski will begin a residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery at the Galilee Medical Centre, where he plans to continue his research with the hope of taking the methods developed in Prof. Levenberg’s lab and implementing them in the clinic.

The following people took part in this research: Dr. Idan Redenski, Shaowei Guo, Majd Machour, Ariel Szklanny, Shira Landau, Ben Kaplan, Roberta I. Lock, Yankel Gabet, Dana Egozi, Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, and Prof. Shulamit Levenberg. Special thanks go to Bruker-Skyscan for their assistance with the microCT studies, allowing non-invasive and precise observation of the healing process.

For the full article in Advanced Functional Materials click here

At just 26 years of age, Lina Maudlej has already accumulated a very impressive list of projects and achievements including her volunteering activities. In recognition of this, she was recently awarded the Shosh Berlinsky Sheinfeld Award for social involvement in the community. The 10,000 ILS prize is intended to encourage and appreciate students who donate their time and skills to the community.

Ms. Maudlej was born in Kafr Qara in Wadi Ara and attended Al-Qasemi High School in Baqa al-Gharbiyye. “I didn’t have a background in computing at home, but science always interested me – and in high school, I was particularly passionate about physics and mathematics. Since I knew that the Technion was the place for these subjects, I signed up and was accepted.”

Ms. Maudlej began her studies at The Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and after taking several courses at the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, she joined the combined track of the two faculties – computer engineering. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she went on to pursue her master’s, which she is hoping to complete this year under the guidance of Professor Mark Silberstein. Her research, conducted in the Accelerated Systems Laboratory (ACSL), deals with accelerator management in cloud computation systems. Most of the work is focused on building a new operating system that will run computational accelerators such as GPUs while achieving high performance and maximum efficiency by using network accelerators.

“My supervisor always saw great potential in me,” said Ms. Maudlej, “both in my research and in my volunteer work. That is why he was so supportive and helped direct me to places where I could develop myself in unexpected ways. I know that being challenged is the right place for me and working with Prof. Silberstein is the right choice. Every day you learn something new. Science never ends, and the challenge is what makes it interesting.” 

Throughout her undergraduate and graduate years, she hasn’t stopped for a moment. In the final stages of her undergraduate degree she worked at Intel, won an award from Amdocs and led projects in the IT course, the “Internet of Things.” On top of this, she continued with her many and varied volunteer activities, which included expanding Wikipedia into Arabic for math, scientific, and technological subjects; participation in the Landa Project, supporting Arab students; and involvement in the Hasoub NGO, promoting technology and innovation in the Arab sector.

Toward the end of her undergraduate degree, Lina became the facilitator in charge of the “Internet of Things” course in the Computer Science Software Development Center (ICST) led by Itai Dabran, and within this framework mentored many young students. She also led systems development projects for the Technion Social Hub together with various organizations, including the Levchash association. The various projects carried out through the hub helped nonprofits by developing programs to support those organizations in need and matching them with volunteers and donors. In this capacity, she dealt with a reduction in food waste in Israel, supporting needy populations, and recycling.

When asked if volunteering gets in the way of her studies, Ms. Maudlej replied, “On the contrary, volunteering helps studies and increases motivation to learn, and vice versa.” And what’s next? “On one hand, I really like academia so going on to do a Ph.D. is a definite possibility. On the other hand, my research is already very practical and is carried out in cooperation with industry, so finding a job outside academia is also possible. The Technion teaches us to think, and this is an important and very effective tool wherever you are – either here at the Technion or in industry.”

 

Researchers from the Technion and the University of Zurich: Contrary to the prevailing assumption, the brain of the first migrants from Africa to Asia 1.8 million years ago was not a modern brain

Researchers from the Technion and the University of Zurich have published a dramatic discovery in Science Magazine about the characteristics of the brain of the first human migrants from Africa to Europe. To date, the accepted theory was that although these individuals – who migrated from Africa to the Caucasus about 1.8 million years ago – had small brains, these small brains had a modern structure similar to that of the human brain today. The present study proves otherwise: their brains were more ape-like than human-like.

Dr. Assaf Marom, head of the Anatomy and Human Evolution Laboratory at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, participated in the study as a postdoctoral researcher for the lead authors of the article, Professor Marcia Ponce de León and Professor Christoph Zollikofer of the Anthropological Institute at the University of Zurich.

According to Dr. Marom, “Until now, it was assumed that the brains of the first migrants from Africa to Europe, although smaller than ours, were anatomically more similar to the brains of humans today than to the brain of a chimpanzee. The present research refutes this assumption; not only were their brains smaller than ours, but they were also more ape-like than human-like. Analysis of the structure of the braincase, particularly in the frontal lobe area, shows that it more resembled the frontal lobe of a primate than the modern human frontal lobe. The human frontal lobe houses neuroanatomical centers to which we attribute human higher functions: planning and decision making, speech, use of tools and instruments, complex social interaction and others.”

The discovery also refutes the belief that the early populations of the human species left Africa as a result of that same evolution into the modern brain structure; according to the new findings, they succeeded in migrating out of Africa and in surviving the journey despite the absence of such a brain. Dr. Marom emphasizes that the term “primitive brain” is not derogatory; those early humans possessed numerous cognitive skills that enabled them to defend themselves, lead cooperative social lives and make basic use of certain tools. “We explain these evolutionary processes as ‘coevolution’ – this is evidence that the development of those tools also played a part in the evolution of the human brain – not only as a result of cognitive skills, but also as their cause.”

Since brains do not fossilize, the study of the brains of ancient species is a tough challenge; consequently, we are forced to rely on indirect evidence such as skull remnants. In the present research, the brain was reconstructed using advanced, high-resolution computed tomography performed in a synchrotron – a particle accelerator, in Grenoble, France. Scans were performed on five skulls discovered in the prior decade in the ancient Georgian village of Dmanisi, the oldest evidence of human presence outside Africa, dated around 1.8 million years ago.

Based on the scans, Dr. Marom reconstructed an endocast, a cast made of the inside of a cranial cavity, shedding light on human neuroanatomy, i.e. the structure of the brain itself. CT scans produce horizontal, or axial, images (slices) of the brain, and Dr. Marom explains that meticulous work was required while reviewing the slices in order to remodel the three-dimensional structure of the endocast. The process yielded a reconstruction of the brain, including the convolutions and furrows of the cerebral cortex, and even its vascular network.

“Man became bipedal around 2.5 million years ago, but his brain was small and primitive. One of the important research questions in human evolution deals with determining the date of the neuroanatomical changes that transformed the brain from ape-like to man-like. Again, until now, it was commonly assumed that these changes occurred in Africa before the first migration to Europe, but we demonstrated that this assumption is incorrect, and those migrants of 1.8 million years ago had primitive brains.”

The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that the modern brain evolved in a later period – 1.5 to 1.7 million years ago, and at that time, more migrations from Africa to Europe had taken place. In its next study, the research team intends to explore the possibility that the “new” migrants with their modern brains encountered the descendants of the ancient migrants and maintained some sort of interaction with them.

Dr. Assaf Marom (M.D., Ph.D.) joined the staff of the Faculty of Medicine after completing his medical studies and doctorate in physical anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and his post-doctorate at the Anthropological Institute at the University of Zurich. He is head of the Anatomy and Human Evolution Laboratory, which integrates imaging and calculation methods to build models allowing for the discovery of when, why and how human beings came to be. Dr. Marom teaches anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion.

For the article: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6538/165

 

 

New discoveries by a team of researchers from Technion, BGU, and HZB, are advancing the understanding of semiconductors, for the purpose of harvesting solar energy

Photovoltaic solar cells are devices that convert sunlight into electricity. Sunlight, however, is available only several hours a day. In order to be used at night, or on cloudy days, energy must be stored to ensure a stable power supply. One approach for doing so is to charge rechargeable batteries during the day, using solar power, and to discharge them to the grid during the night. This requires large-scale battery storage that increases the cost of solar power and is only effective for short-term storage. Long-term seasonal storage requires other solutions.

Another approach, which is the subject of studies by Professor Avner Rothschild from the Technion – Institute of Technology and his research group, is to use photoelectrochemical cells to convert sunlight not into electricity, but into hydrogen fuel produced by splitting water molecules (H2O) into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2). The stored hydrogen can be used later for producing electricity, or put to other uses such as heating, fueling fuel-cell electric vehicles, and various industrial processes such as steelmaking, petrochemical refining, and ammonia production. 

At the heart of both photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical solar cells is a semiconductor photoabsorber – a material capable of absorbing photons and generating free charge carriers (electrons and holes) that contribute to the photocurrent. But where commercial solar cells use silicon for that purpose, photoelectrochemical cells must rely on other materials that display greater compatibility to the conditions in which the cell must operate, such as stability in aqueous electrolytes. A promising material for that purpose is hematite, an abundant form of iron oxide whose chemical composition is similar to that of rust. Until now, though, hematite has been frustrating scientists: despite half a decade of research, scientists have been able to obtain from it less than 50% of the solar energy conversion efficiency that theory predicts. Prof. Rothschild’s group now shows in a paper in Nature Materials why this is the case and presents a novel way of assessing the actual efficiency limit that might be obtained from hematite and other semiconductors.

The group postulated that the efficiency loss in hematite is not caused solely from charge carrier recombination, a well-known effect that can be mitigated by nanostructuring and light trapping techniques but occurs also due to internal light–matter interaction effects that cannot be mitigated by these approaches. According to their hypothesis, a portion of the electrons excited by absorbed photons are excited into electronic states that cannot move freely within the material. The absorbed photons that give rise to these localized electronic transitions are thus “wasted” without contributing to the photocurrent. 

Using an ultrathin (7 nm) hematite film, the group was able to measure the effect in correlation to wavelength, extracting the so-called wavelength dependent photogeneration yield spectrum. In collaboration with the research group of Professor Roel van de Krol from the Institute for Solar Fuels in Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, they measured a similar spectral response of photogenerated charge carriers by another, microwave-based technique. Obtaining similar results by the two different methods serves as a verification of the method and demonstrates that the photogeneration yield is an overlooked, yet fundamental limitation responsible for the underperformance of hematite photoelectrodes for solar energy conversion and storage.

The group’s novel method will allow the characterization of other materials in the same way they characterized hematite, providing information on the limitations of different materials and giving access to information about light-matter interaction in correlated electron materials with non-trivial opto-electronic properties. This will open the way to more efficient construction of photoelectrochemical cells, giving access to renewable energy and green hydrogen fuel.

The following took part in the research: Dr. Daniel Grave, a scientist at the Department of Materials Engineering at Ben Gurion University of the Negev; Dr. David Ellis, Yifat Piekner, Dr. Hen Dotan, Dr. Asaf Kay, and Prof. Avner Rothschild from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Grand Technion Energy Program at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology; as well as Dr. Moritz Kölbach, Patrick Schnell, Dr. Fatwa Abdi, Dr. Dennis Friedrich, and Prof. Roel van de Krol from the Institute for Solar Fuels at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. The research leading to these results received funding from the PAT Center of Research Excellence supported by the Israel Science Foundation.

Click here for the paper in Nature Materials

Agricultural irrigation accounts for 80 percent of water usage in the United States. In Israel, the number is just under 60 percent. With water being a finite resource, the use of recycled water for irrigation is a significant contributor to water conservation. As part of the purification process necessary in order to safely use recycled water for irrigation, excess sodium should be removed, but some minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, should be retained.

A high ratio of sodium to calcium and magnesium, also known as Sodium Absorption Ratio, adversely affects soil permeability, negatively impacts water infiltration rate, and damages crops. Over time it can cause the salinization of the soil, and such damage can be hard to reverse. Modern methods of water purification are either non-selective, removing wanted minerals and unwanted salts alike and requiring subsequent remineralization of the water; or expensive and not tunable (i.e., they cannot be dynamically adjusted for different feedwater inputs or for changing effluent requirements).

Capacitive deionization is a novel water treatment technology that aims to improve precisely on this non-selectivity. Capacitive deionization uses two electrodes, which are often made from activated carbon, an inexpensive and widely available material. Applying electric charge to the electrodes causes salts and minerals in the feedwater to migrate into the electrodes and collect in nanopores on them – essentially in microscopic content-specific pockets. When these “pockets” are full, reversing the charge empties them out, and the electrode is ready for use again. The problem with this method is that the electrodes wear out quickly.

A breakthrough was recently achieved by Professor Matthew Suss of the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering, and his team (Ph.D. students Eric Guyes and Amit Shocron, and master’s student Yinke Chen), in collaboration with Professor Charles Diesendruck of the Technion’s Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, whose main interests are water desalination and energy conservation.

In the team’s system, water flows through two porous electrodes. By sulfonating one of the electrodes – that is, executing a chemical reaction that is cheap and easy to perform – the team was able to produce a capacitive deionization cell that proved effective in reducing the Sodium Absorption Ratio of the feedwater, giving significantly better results than cells with electrodes that were not similarly treated. The electrode was also much more stable than what has previously been described. The team ran 1000 cycles of water treatment through it, without the electrode showing significant deterioration – a record cycle life for a cell of this type. 

The process was energetically efficient, and the efficiency can be improved further using already existing methods. The system is also easily tuneable. By changing the voltage and the charging time of the electrodes, different results can be obtained, making the method applicable to various uses, including irrigation and more. The findings could lead to a number of practical applications, since the team managed to improve on all aspects of water purification systems that continue to pose a challenge.

Click here for the paper in Clean Water